Fig. 2.

Effect of combined administration of scopolamine/dimethyl sulfoxide (scop/DMSO), donepezil and ASS234 on (A) recognition index (RI) and (B) total objects exploration time in T2. Drugs were coadministered 30 min before T1. (A) Significant differences between scop/DMSO and control nontreated groups (**p < 0.01). When compared with the scop/DMSO group, treatment with either donepezil (done/scop group) or ASS234 (ASS234/scop group) (0.12 mM/kg) reversed the short-term memory impairment induced by scopolamine (*p < 0.05), suggesting that ASS234 is able to reverse scopolamine-induced cognitive impairment. The dose chosen for the hybrid drug (0,12 mM/kg) was the same as that of donepezil (0.12 mM/kg), for comparative purposes. The percentage of the novel object recognition time was evaluated as RI = (t_novel ÷ [t_novel + t_familiar]) × 100. (B) No significant effect on total exploration time during the test was found after intraperitoneal administration of scop/DMSO, donepezil or ASS234. (C) There were no differences between groups in the latency to first approach to the novel object. Behavioural data were analyzed using 1-way analysis of variance (ANOVA), followed by a Bonferroni post hoc test for multigroup comparisons to compare the data from the experimental groups.